Deaths at Sloth World

Megan Boyle: It's a story that has sparked outrage and garnered media attention all over the world. We had government records verifying that 31 sloths had died. Slothworld built itself as a conservation-based attraction, but few animals survived under its care. Some arrived dead on arrival, others had emaciated bodies. It has renewed a long-standing argument over what rights and protections animals have under US law. Under the law, a person can do what they want with their property, including destroy it. Meanwhile, in the American West, some people aren't happy with the protected rights and return of an apex predator. One woman in particular, there were wolves trying to get in her herd every night. How one group is training ranchers to protect their cattle from newly released gray wolves. That's coming up on Inside Climate. Welcome to Inside Climate. I'm your host, Kylie Price. Something that often catches my eye on social media are posts by a friend or influencer posing with a rare and cute animal. Who wouldn't want to smile alongside a sloth while traveling through Honduras? Animal encounters are popular tourist attractions abroad and at home. But a recent Inside Climate news investigation uncovered that a planned Florida-based facility called Sloth World was importing exotic animals. And most of the animals were dying due to improper care and stress. It raises a lot of questions about animal rights and lack of oversight, something that I'll talk about with Katie Surma, my co-reporter on this story. In our second interview, I'll talk to my inside climate co-host, Jake Bolster, about how animal protections and conservation efforts are a source of tension on his beat, covering the American West. Jake recently traveled to Colorado and California to report on a new technique ranchers are exploring. To better protect their cattle from grey wolves, which were recently reintroduced into the wild after nearly being hunted to the point of extinction. Can wolves and ranchers coexist in a beef hungry world? Let's get started. Hi Katie, welcome to the show. We're so happy to have you on Inside Climate. And today is gonna be kind of a unique episode because you and I co-reported the story that we'll be talking about. Can you start by telling us what tipped you off on this? And what made you go, wow, this is a big deal? Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for having me. This is a pleasure. and so earlier this year in February, I was reporting a Rights of Nature story. I'm inside Climate News' rights of nature reporter. ⁓ and for people who haven't heard about that, it's a movement that is ⁓ making the case to governments that the natural world has inherent rights to exist and that it's a a living being. And For that story, I'd reached out to the sloth scientist named Rebecca Cliff, and she told me about Sloth World, including that she thought 31 sloths had died at least, and she's she claimed that many more probably had as well. And she said that these animals were coming from the wild. So they were being taken from South America and shipped to the United States and sold. Just based on that information alone, I thought there this is this is an important story. So at that point I I talked to some former Sloth World employees. I ran down like what government agencies are in charge of oversight of of such a business. And ⁓ our editors gave me the green light. And then at that point I I reached out to you because you have extensive experience reporting on the wildlife trade. And we just hit the ground running. Yeah, absolutely. When I heard about the situation. I knew it was something that I wanted to jump in on with you. ⁓ so yeah, we collaborated on this piece and it was it was a lot of teamwork. ⁓ I tracked down an incident report from this state agency called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and it really blew the story wide open. The report went into a lot of detail into what went down in late 2024 and early 2025, which was Dozens of sloths at this facility were dying. The facility was not prepared, according to the report. So basically there was no running water, there was no heat. ⁓ it was unusually cold in Florida at the time, which is a big issue for sloths because they need tropical like heat and humidity. ⁓ that's kind of their ideal conditions. So yeah, they tried to put in space heaters according to the report, but Those space heaters actually tripped the fuse. And there was one night that there was no heat for the sloths. ⁓ they started dying in droves, and then another shipment came in from Peru, and 10 more sloths were dead by the end of this ⁓ period of time. So another thing that we obtained were necropsy reports, which are basically like animal autopsies. And that kind of revealed different conditions for the sloths ⁓ in more detail. So Katie, I was wondering if you could talk about that a bit. Yeah, of course. ⁓ the necropsy reports, for instance, said one of them arrived in a a crate covered in diarrhea. That sloth spent the rest of his life, you know, having diarrhea until it was found dead on the bottom of its crate. Some arrived dead on arrival. ⁓ Others had emaciated bodies. Many had viral infections that were activated because of the stress that they were put under. When sloths are under stress, they often freeze and internalize it. And that can kill them. They curl into a ball and and over time that can that can cause their their organs to fail. I'm wondering if we can shift gears a little bit and talk about like once we had this information, we obviously needed to r approach the owner of Sloth World. ⁓ his name was Ben Agresta. Yeah. I called Mr. Agresta and ⁓ t told him why why I was calling that we wanted to h hear from him what had happened. And he I told him that we had the government ⁓ records verifying that 31 sloths had died at the facility and he called that completely fiction. He told me that I should be careful about what I write ⁓ and what I print, and he hung up and and told me to never call him again. ⁓ and then we published this the story and there was a huge reaction from the public. It was completely overwhelming how much it took off. the response by officials was pretty quick. So the 13 surviving sloths left at Sloth World, ⁓ that's all that were left, by the way. they were transferred to a zoo, but some of them have since died succumbing to the illnesses that they already had and the conditions that they had been put in. ⁓ Florida opened a criminal probe on Slothworld. The Florida Attorney General's office confirmed that Slothworld will not be opening its doors. And Florida actually banned the import of sloths for two months. Now there's been discussions of possible legislation for how to import sloths, whether sloths should be imported into the US. ⁓ but another thing that came out of our original reporting was more reporting on Slothworld. So Katie, can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, after we published, a lot of news organizations picked up the story. The New York Times, the BBC, The Guardian, ⁓ among others. And that publicity has driven other tips our way about what's happening in the exotic wildlife trade. ⁓ and that included a tip about a longtime animal exhibitor named Larry Wallach, who had a sloth encounter business in New York. ⁓ The New York courts ⁓ shut that business down or ordered it to ordered him to stop operating and he ended up closing. That case was about a code violation. but he has since sought to move his business to Florida to open a new sloth encounter style business. And Florida, the state of Florida, has recently licensed him. In my story about him, I walk through, you know. a two-decade history of Animal Welfare Act violations ⁓ that that he's had with tigers and sloths and and various other animals. And so he's he's told me that he is confident that he's gonna be able to reopen his business in Florida. And so just to clarify, this came just a couple months after the Sloth World controversy. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I would add that I think another impactful thing that that came out of this is that the response to our reporting showed that the public, you ha is taking issue with the way the law and government institutions treat wildlife. You know, under the law, it it treats sloths, which are sentient beings with specific biological needs, no differently than it treats other property, whether that's like a table or a microwave or or something like that. And And under the law, a person can do what they want with their property, including destroy it. And so there seems to be an appetite in the United States, ⁓ you know, based on the the response that we've seen to to our reporting that that that needs to change, somehow. Yeah, one of the biggest surprises that we had been told repeatedly by officials is that ⁓ people who own exotic animals aren't always required to report the deaths of these animals. So in the case of Sloth World, ⁓ that was one of the big responses that we got back was, well, they weren't required to show this. And Katie, can you talk to me about anything that might have surprised you in this piece? Yeah, well, I mean I I think the the question that we still don't have an answer to and we put this to flow The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which is the regulatory body in the state in charge of overseeing the welfare of exotic wildlife. They have, they'd never answered our question as to whether they had the they didn't have the authority to go in and do something to stop this, or they did have the authority and just chose not to. You know, as these deaths were unfolding over the course of 14 months, ⁓ they received warnings in these emails showed. ⁓ from the public that something was going on. They knew about the 31 deaths. They would have had access to import records, knowing that sloths were were coming in, that the business kept importing them. Yet there was no intervention until our story, you know, hit in April and mid-April when we published. The USDA officials throughout that time period also told Florida that they had animal welfare concerns about this business, ⁓ and still not nothing was done. So another follow-up story that we did was about disease. ⁓ like we mentioned earlier, a lot of these slots had diseases, including what the necropcy report called a novel gamma herpes virus. ⁓ Katie, can you talk about how those diseases could possibly affect people? Yeah, ⁓ well, so as we were reporting the initial slothworld story, there was an internal email, Slothworld email, where one of the companies vets was saying this could be a novel virus, ⁓ and voicing other concerns. And so we questioned ⁓ a lot of state ⁓ the state and federal agencies that supposedly have oversight of this, and they pointed to each other. It was it reminded Kylie and I of that Spider-Man meme where everyone's kind of pointing at someone else. ⁓ and the experts that we questioned about this experts in in pathogens and, you know, looking at the Ebola outbreak that's happening right now, which has come from animals, they said this is extremely concerning. Something else worth understanding in wildlife trade is that there wouldn't be a market for it if there wasn't demand. ⁓ This can come from social media, this can come from pop culture, ⁓ it can even come from something like a sloth plushie being adorably cute, which they definitely are. ⁓ I think on the flip side of that though is that the love of these animals can also spark change. Katie, can you talk about how that comes up in your beat? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, love, but also a recognition that we as human beings are part of nature. ⁓ we're You know, we come from from the earth and we're entirely dependent on it for our own survival. And that's really at the heart of the rights of nature movement. It's it's bringing humanity back to this understanding. And a lot of people say the movement's Indigenous led because many indigenous communities never forgot that, never lost that understanding. And, you know, this isn't like a niche idea, ⁓ rights of nature. There's hundreds of expressions of this in various laws and declarations around the world. And I think the count is like more than a dozen countries have some sort of national level rights of nature law. That's includes Spain, New Zealand, Uganda, Ecuador, Bolivia, many, many countries. ⁓ treat nature as property, as a commodity, again, like no different than a table, are failing us. ⁓ they say that's why, you know, part of the that's sort of a root cause of climate change. It's a root cause of biodiversity loss. And they, you know, point to something like Sloth World and say, this is why that business was, you know, they, our reporting showed imported more than 60 wild sloths, ⁓ some of which were pregnant. ⁓ And more than 50 of them died there. ⁓ so those are part of the arguments ⁓ behind this movement. And this story really is a a rights of nature story as much as it is, you know, a government accountability story. We've got a lot more reporting coming up in this space. So stay tuned. ⁓ Katie, thank you so much for talking about this story on the lack of wildlife protections. Thank you for having me, and thank you for being my reporting. partner, this has been one of the more difficult stories to report and I just so appreciate getting to do it together with you. I totally agree. Next I'm going to talk to my co-host, Jake Bolster, about a different animal story that he's been working on that looks at how successful efforts to revive and return an apex predator species to the wild is having a difficult impact on ranchers out west. Jake, it's fun to be able to talk with you as a guest. And hear more about your latest story on a topic that you and I have collaborated on in the past, which is wolves. For our audience who are not familiar with the plight of wolves, they are a species that was once hunted to the brink of extinction. But in recent decades, there's been a lot of conservation efforts to restore their populations, especially in the American West. So last year, Jake and I both reported on the political ping-pong match that wolves are stuck in. There's pretty much been a constant debate over whether wolves belong on the endangered species list and what kinds of protections they should have. So right now where it stands, gray wolves are listed as endangered or threatened in the majority of states, but biologists estimate that there are around 7,000 wolves in the lower 48. Jake, can you talk to me about this particular story that you've been working on with wolves and ranchers? Totally. So the latest entry in into the the long running saga of wolves in the lower forty eight is Colorado and the decision by voters there in 2020 to reintroduce wolves. And this this was notable for a number of reasons. Number one, this was the first time that wolves had come back through a state ballot initiative, what's sometimes referred to as ballot box biology. It was it was also notable because it was a very narrow margin. I think a lot of people probably thought that this would be something of a, you know, a ⁓ an easy win for for people who wanted to see wolves. And instead, the vote passed with less than 51% of support. And then three years later, Colorado Parks and Wildlife ⁓ releases 10 wolves on the western slope of Colorado as kind of the first batch of this new experimental population that is meant to eventually grow and and one day flourish in the state. Over the last three years, though, very little has gone according to any bun's plan. The wolf population has grown. Wolves are are very creative, very resilient creatures. But there has been you know, you know, there have been lots of payouts to ranchers, more than in the state's budget for fifteen wolves according to the state, have died so far, some natural causes. ⁓ although one rancher notably ⁓ did admit to an employee shooting a wolf in a letter to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. I think another was was maybe killed by a mountain lion. So th there's a range of reasons why these wolves die and the state had planned for for wolves dying. But I don't what what I suspect Colorado did not plan for is the Fish and Wildlife Service telling them that they could not go and get a new batch of wolves from from Canada, which had been the plan all along. And that's important because and you can probably speak to this more than I could, but biologically you need new You need new animals in this experimental population to keep it healthy, to keep it growing, to keep genetic diversity up. And so that was that was the plan. And and now it's been it's been sort of thrust into this uncertain liminal space. So that's where things stand right now. Right. Can you talk a little bit more about the people who might not be happy to have those wolves back? Well, I think I'll start by saying that ⁓ when a vote is that close. I think it resists this kind of easy categorization as as in like, you know, like, you know, all all people in all cities voted for it and all people in rural places voted against it. Nevertheless, that is the predominant narrative. And when you look at the data, ⁓ you know, if you look at Denver County, if you look at ⁓ Boulder, these s sort of urban areas in Colorado, you did see a higher vote margin for ⁓ reintroducing wolves. And then on the western slope where you have these smaller ⁓ communities where the economy is focused on agriculture or ⁓ ecotourism or maybe their mining and resource extraction, there were there was less support. And and this is particularly concentrated in in the ranching community. And that is because, you know, ranchers are raising cattle. They're raising cattle. And the way they do it is they in the summer, they turn them loose in typically on on in public land. And ⁓ those cattle go up there, they get fat, they graze, and they come back and they're bigger, and they are ranchers take them and they sell them on a per pound basis. So the bigger they are, the more money they get. And this is this is the way it's worked for ranching ⁓ for a long time. And one of the reasons Colorado has been viewed as a really desirable spot to reintroduce wolves is because there is a lot of open and public land in the state. People are envisioning wolves being on this public land. Well, when you put wolves and cattle in the same place, you have the potential for wolves and and cattle to interact. So one of the things ranchers are worried about is ⁓ wolves killing their cattle or or even just running their cattle, chasing their cattle and the cattle coming back less, less fat and and therefore less profitable to them. And just to put a number on it, so Colorado has a compensation program for ranchers who the state determines have lost livestock to a wolf. And that fund in the last two years has paid out over ⁓ a million in compensation to ranchers. Wow. Yeah. It's that's a big number. And and the state budgets, I think, a little more than three hundred thousand dollars annually for those payments. So so it's exceeding what they what they're expecting. That's really interesting and obviously makes a lot of sense from the ranchers' perspective, given that this is their livelihoods. ⁓ can we take a little step back too, though, and talk about where wolves kind of belong in this ecosystem and and what kind of impacts they can have at a broader scale prior to when they were almost extirpated? Totally. ⁓ so this this is a notion that has been really popular ⁓ I think in environmental circles and conservation circ circles. And that is that restoring apex predators like wolves to ecosystems where they used to live in large numbers, transforms or alters the area in some way. And Yellowstone is a really good example of how this narrative has played out recently. So when bears, grizzly bears, beavers, and wolves were more abundant in Yellowstone pre-uh white European settlement, ⁓ the scientists have looked back and and found that Yellowstone existed in what they called a beaver willow stable state. So this is a place where Beavers and willows are offering like mutual aid to one another. The damming of that beavers do with rivers helps willows grow, and the bark that willows produce help beavers make more dams. And so that's how Yellowstone existed. And then you have the extirpation campaign of not only wolves, but beavers and to a lesser extent, but still substantial extent, grizzlies. And and Yellowstone changes. There are much fewer beaver dams. The willows don't have the same water table that they are used to. And now, with wolves and bears gone, you have less pressure on elk and deer populations. And so deer and elk start grazing, and Yellowstone converts into what scientists have called a ⁓ elk grassland state. So now the the ecological consequence of removing something like a wolf from this food web resulted in riparian corridors, ⁓ and willow habitat and deer populations all being affected. When you introduce wolves back in, do you expect there to be changes and ecosystems reverting back immediately? I think a lot of people have hoped for that to happen. And I think the science shows in the the scientists I've talked to that we we don't have enough information to say that that is the case yet. ⁓ and and then the last point I'll make is there's a moral case here that ⁓ conservationists will bring up that, you know, we we authored in this country a extirpation campaign. People were paid to take out wolves because they were seen as a threat to a business or a way of life. And that is r you know, people feel like that was a mistake. And and we owe it to not only the the ecosystem, but to the animals themselves potentially to bring them back. Yeah. And obviously ecology is incredibly complex on these landscapes and You kind of touched on that, how it can have this chain reaction. But people are incredibly complex too. ⁓ can you talk to me more about that and why ranchers and rural communities are so concerned about this return of wolves, even at this scale that's not quite as big as before? Absolutely. So for this story, I traveled to Del Norte, Colorado, and I spoke with a lot of ranchers there because They have not yet seen a ton of wolf pressure. What I heard a lot was was fear and anxiety and worry. They were saying their margins are just that thin and the business climate that uncertain. But then there was also this domino effect of that that they were worried about. I had a couple people tell me that if if it was no longer worth it for them to raise cattle here, they would have to subdivide their ranch. And that means that they would. Go to a housing developer and say, hey, look, I have all this land. You know, you pay me for however many parcels and you can build houses here. And that's that's happened in every state in the West. And it is something that when I speak with ranchers about stories, you know, they they will tell me that's just their nightmare. What are the current management strategies that these ranchers are using to coexist with wolves and are they effective? Yeah. Big picture. Wolves account for a tiny, tiny percentage. We're talking about less than one percent of all confirmed cattle deaths in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Those are the three places where wolves were first reintroduced. So so things that ranchers can do would be ⁓ install flagery. That's these like bits of red tape along fences that kind of billow in the wind, and those are supposed to spook or startle a wolf. Another option is hiring. What's called a range rider. So this is someone on horseback who is riding with your cattle and the human presence is supposed to deter a wolf, or if they see a wolf, they can charge at it on the horseback and and and scare it off. But again, that that incurs a cost. So I think that ⁓ these are what the best practices are. But this this story was really focusing on a group that that feels like they have a novel approach that is not incremental and one that is sustainable for in the sense that once a ranch adopts it, it can pass it down to the next generation of rancher and you don't have to pay anyone. But what it really demands is is time and effort and ⁓ you know a willingness to try something new on the part of a rancher. So this group's name they're called Working Circle. They're started in California ten years ago. What Working Circle does is it helps ranchers manage their livestock In a way that better prepares them to deal with wolf predation on their own. You want the cattle to be their own deterrents. This does one of two things. It helps them, a ranch, you know, minimize potential losses or conflict. But it also is working circle says this is just best practices for a ranch, period. So are ranchers open to taking advice from what is quote unquote a pro wolf. advocate, like this seems like quite a tricky relationship based on everything we've talked about before this. Yeah. Yes. ⁓ it is a tricky relationship. And so I have I have attended a working circle clinic, one where they explain sort of verbally why their approach works. And then the second where they demonstrate. So in their presentations they talk about how wolves are opportunistic and and risk managing hunters. If they determine that your livestock are the most vulnerable, they'll then they'll keep coming back. You want your cattle to behave more like bison than deer. So if a group of wolves shows up, you want your cattle to group up. You want mothers to find their babies and keep them close. And you want essentially a stare down. So Jake, I hear what you're saying that there's this new technique out there that might be able to provide a better way for ranchers to mitigate these losses from wolves and and better handle their cattle. What does that actually look like on the ground for somebody who's not a rancher? Totally, totally. Based on what I've seen and how it's been explained to me, when a rancher is typically moving cattle, they are creating a loud, chaotic environment that can ex stress the animals out. And as we've already discussed, when cattle get stressed, they can lose weight. So you don't want to be doing that to your animals on your own ranch. So what they offer are a series of alternatives and it's a little difficult to describe, but what it amounts to is asking cattle to think as they move and and respond to you in a way where ⁓ they are not raising their stress level and they're moving more orderly from point A to point B. And then when they go out into the the summer grazing pasture, if they do encounter a predator, they are much more likely to form up As a group, because you're handling them as a group back on the ranch and you're asking them to move somewhere, get together, find your babies, get in a group. And then that dramatically, according to Working Circle, increases the likelihood that the wolves just eventually try, you know, maybe to get a few weaklings out and then and then move on and and don't return eventually. Got it. So power in numbers, basically. Absolutely. Absolutely. Jake, does it seem like this strategy is picking up steam, or where where do things stand right now with how this is moving forward? I think that working circle would tell you that their strategy has been effective on a a very limited scale. And the ranchers I spoke to in Colorado were pretty evenly divided. Some people respected that ⁓ the information they brought and the knowledge they shared, but still felt like there was nothing they could do. Other people felt like Okay, someone's offering me a tool that they say could work. I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try it. And what I heard from ranchers in in Northern California, one woman in particular in her ranch, it sounded like working circle and the help that they had given her had really made a difference. That that she went from, as she put it to me, getting slaughtered by wolves to in a place where she was able to move a large herd of cattle from her ranch up into the mountains. And there were wolves trying to get in her herd every night. And it was stress yeah, it was stressful on the animals. They were walking really far every day at but none of them died. They grouped up, they they stood their ground, and they feel like their work with those animals made a difference in that they could withstand that journey. She feels like she has a technique to keep her land and keep her business up and running. But is Working Circle working on a large scale? Not yet. I mean they they're not part of any official reintroduction plan at the state or federal level. And it is still an idea that I think is blossoming on a smaller scale at the moment. Jake, it's really interesting because in our first segment we talked a lot about the rights of nature and this idea that animals have a right to live in the natural habitats and that it even helps humans to have this in place. But it sounds like when it comes to wolves, there is this. separate layer and a lot of emotions that come along with these conversations. Do you think that given the current political context and economic issues and everything that you've been bringing up about what these ranchers are facing, is there a way that the wolves and the ranchers can coexist? Well, I think we should zoom out and just say that there are wolves in several US states and none of them like in in none of those states has the ranching industry collapsed as a result. To a certain extent, wolves and ranching are coexisting right now. What Working Circle is offering is a roadmap for how to try to go about addressing some of these conflicts at the root cause, the economics of ranching. Some of them are the biology and behavior of wolves. And to the extent that people who want to see wolves return to the landscape are investing time and resources into understanding not only how wolves affect their natural surroundings, but also the the human environment that we're putting them back into. I mean, there's more subdevelopment everywhere in the West now than when they were gone. There's ranchers and ranches all over. There's more cattle. You know, we can't say we're putting them right back into the same environment they left. And so if working circle, I think, is is offering a vision of how to address some of the root challenges in ranching in a way that environmental advocates or conservation advocates would be comfortable with and finding, I guess, common ground between ⁓ what a rancher needs and what someone who wants to see a wolf pack return to, you know, the the Rockies would want. But this is not this is not something that one group can solve. Working circles technique may be experimental and new, but it's not a silver bullet. This is not a conversation that ⁓ is gonna go away. But maybe you could maybe you could lower the temperature. And I think that is what they are offering an example of with their work in California and and Colorado. Jake, thanks so much for joining us on Inside Climate and turning from host to guest to talk more about your reporting on wolves. Absolutely. This was great. And so for a final thought, we'll toast several ICM reporters on a rare achievement, which is coming up in just a moment. Last year, an Inside Climate news series that showed the often hidden environmental impacts. Of China's trillion dollar development push was named a finalist for the John B. Oaks Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism. Reporters Georgina Gustin, Nicholas Kuznets, and Katie Surma reported from Argentina, Ecuador, Hungary, Indonesia, Peru, Zambia, and Zimbabwe for the Planet China series, which showed how a country that has been damaged by its own industrial ambition is now inflicting the same harm beyond its borders. The series was edited by Jamie Smith Hopkins. The judges wrote, This trailblazing series connects the dots and unfurls a roadmap for environmental reporting in a globalized economy. The Oaks Prize is one of the highest honors for environmental reporting in the industry. This year's joint winner is the New York Times and the Examination, alongside finalists Inside Climate News and The Washington Post. Thank you so much for listening to Inside Climate. For more of our reporting, please visit insideclimatenews.org and sign up for our newsletters, all of which are free to read because we want to make our work available to anyone wherever they are. You can also follow us on your favorite social media platforms and share our podcast with others. If you love what you read, see, and hear, please consider donating to support our nonprofit newsroom, because we rely on the support of our audience to make our reporting and this podcast possible. We'll be back soon with more climate stories from our reporters. All across the world.